Horncastle: when Del Piero came of age against Fiorentina
Claudio Marchisio was at the Delle Alpi on that cold December day in 1994. Still a month shy of his 8th birthday, he had already been in Juventus’ academy for a couple of years. “I remember it well,” the Little Prince explained. “We were in the central stand. The third tier. I remember I was with all my family. Papà got a season ticket for us all, even my sister and we all went to the stadium. But I remember it because it was a great game and against Fiorentina too, a historic rival of la Juve.”
Marchisio was still too young to remember when the `81-82 season went down to the final day. No doubt his father Stefano will. Juventus and Fiorentina were neck and neck at the top of the table with 44 points a piece. The Bianconeri went to Catanzaro. The Viola to Cagliari and the denouement will give you an idea of why Juventus are known as Gobbi or Hunchbacks, whose hunches, so legend has it, bring luck when touched.
Fiorentina could only draw after referee Maurizio Mattei disallowed a Ciccio Graziani goal that would have won the game, while Juventus clinched victory and the title via a Liam Brady penalty. “I saw [Juventus’ president] Giampiero Boniperti eating nuts in the stands,” the Oscar-winning director and Fiorentina fan Franco Zeffirelli remarked, “He looked like an American mafioso.”
Things only escalated further in the `90s. “Thieves” shouted Fiorentina defender Celeste Pin during a RAI interview after his side lost the first leg of the 1990 UEFA Cup final in Turin. The second leg wasn’t played at the Artemio Franchi, as it was undergoing refurbishment ahead of the World Cup, but nor did it go ahead in nearby Perugia where Fiorentina had played their semi-final against Werder Bremen. Crowd trouble instead meant it was moved to Avellino, a place where Juventus were everyone’s second team.
In time, Fiorentina could maybe get over that defeat. But the sale of Roberto Baggio to Juventus that summer provoked riots on the streets of Florence. Of scant consolation was his refusal to take a penalty against them upon his return the following season. Luigi De Agostini stepped up instead and missed. Fiorentina won and as he left the pitch Baggio picked up a purple scarf and draped it around his neck. Tensions between the fans reached a high watermark in this period and as a boy brought up during it, Marchisio couldn’t but be aware of the enmity.
The game he attended was met with great anticipation. Fiorentina had bounced straight back to Serie A after a traumatic relegation. Gabriel Batistuta had scored in each of his opening 10 games of the season, breaking a 32-year record held by the Bologna winger Ezio Pascutti. Juventus were second, a point short of league leaders Parma, and Fiorentina found themselves in third, the same distance behind their hosts that afternoon.
“It was a crazy game,” Marcello Lippi recalled. Fiorentina got their noses in front when Angelo Peruzzi and Batistuta took each other out and Ciccio Baiano pounced on the loose ball. Angelo Carbone then doubled the Viola's lead with a forgotten thing of beauty: a half volley that looped over the Juventus goalkeeper and went under the bar.
But Fiorentina let it all go to their heads. “I was having a go at them from the sideline,” Claudio Ranieri recalled, “because I could see they were going for a third goal and weren’t giving our opponent’s any respect.”
With 20 minutes to go, Gianluca Vialli pulled one back. Then another and as the final whistle approached, left-back Alessandro Orlando launched a ball into the box. This was the moment when a legend truly began in earnest. A champion was born.
Alessandro Del Piero had already scored his first goal as a professional for Padova in November 1992. Giovanni Trapattoni had given him a debut in Juventus’ colours in September 1993 and he’d registered his first hat-trick too, this time against Parma, the same club he’d almost been sent out on loan to as part of a deal for Dino Baggio that broke down.
But it wasn’t until Orlando’s speculative ball arced over his shoulder that Del Piero became Del Piero, announcing himself to the world 21 years ago last week as one of the players to define a generation.
“It all went quite quickly,” he said, “because I didn’t think too much about it and perhaps that was for the best. I only had one thing in mind and that was to hit the ball in such a way as to get it over Toldo.” Facing Del Piero, Fiorentina’s goalkeeper remained stunned. “Outside of his right foot on the volley. It was a masterpiece,” Toldo said. “The best goal anyone has put past me.” The opportunism, the sense of positioning, the technique.
Del Piero also considers it his most beautiful. “Because it’s different from all the others, so its very diversity makes it special.”
Vialli has cheekily suggested that he got lucky. “It was a great goal. Extraordinary for the coordination and the courage he showed to try and carry off a skill of such difficulty. But I’ve got to say, he didn’t strike the ball very well. It was that classic case of the ball hitting your shin then your ankle and going in the top corner. No one will ever say this. But I was there and I saw it!”
What made this goal so special wasn’t only the execution, even if Vialli felt it left a lot to be desired, but the significance it had within the game and the bearing it would also have on Juventus’ season. To score a late winner is always satisfying. Even more so when it completes a comeback from 2-0 down in a grudge match. It also filled Juventus with belief and an awareness of their own strength. If they could turn a game like this around, there was absolutely nothing they couldn’t do. It was the major turning point in their season and the beginning of the end of a nine-year wait for the Scudetto. There you have it: One goal can tell a thousand stories.
Curiously, neither Del Piero nor Vialli were declared Man of the Match that day. At least in La Repubblica. That honour went to Paulo Sousa instead. His past with Juventus meant his appointment at Fiorentina in the summer initially met with some dissent. But he has won over the Curva Fiesole.
The Viola went top for the first time since 1999 in September and, instead of fading, have shown impressive staying power, while Juventus are back in the title race after five consecutive wins in Serie A. Unbeaten in the league with him in the team, Marchisio will be hoping to participate in another classic on Sunday that lives up to the one he attended as a spectator all those years ago.
